There's one thing I want to point out before you ask me why this report is so short and lame. Let me tell you a little story about a boy named Heckle. Heckle had his senior prom on friday night. It lasted until 12 midnight, and then little Heckle went to an after party where he drank himself stupid. He didn't sleep at all. Granted, there were times when he was in a bed under a bunch of blankets, but he wasn't sleeping. When 7 am rolled around, he went home and took a shower, and went to E3. So, as you can probably infer, I wasn't in prime condition to wade through the sensory assault that is E3. I had a wicked hangover and hadn't slept in an ungodly amount of time, and all the lights and colors of E3 seemed too bright and too loud. There were a few times when I went to the lounge and layed on a couch trying to regroup (and not fall asleep). So, without further ado, Heckle's long-awaited and severely disappointing E3 report.

I walked into the L.A. Convention Center and the first thing I noticed was the humongous Nintendo display. They had a third of the entire building sectioned off for Nintendo (that's freaking big!). It was extremely crowded. I pushed my way through the hoardes of booth babes, Japanese people, and fat D&D types. I played Smash Brothers for a little while, and I really wasn't all that impressed. It had incredible graphics, yes, but the gameplay wasn't all that innovative. It was just like playing the 64 version but with much better visuals. The next thing that caught my eye was that Dinosaur Planet piece of shit. It had lovely graphics, but it looked like somebody took Zelda 64, improved the graphics, and replaced Link with Fox. Actually, I didn't like some things about the graphics. In true Nintendo fashion, the boundries to the levels were just big walls with a jungle texture slapped onto it. Honestly, this is a "next gen" system, and we're still resorting to that crap?

Luigi's Mansion looked very cool. I was struck by how similar the concept was to Ghostbusters (Luigi was wearing a backpack with a gun coming out of it, and he'd suck ghosts into the backpack), but that's okay. The graphics were beautiful, not a polygon in sight, and the most important thing: it looked fun. Yay!

The Star Wars game looked incredible. I thought I was watching a freakin' movie. Game play looked awesome, too. That's a must-buy.

After I was finished with those games, I walked up to these gigantic letters that were sitting at an angle on the floor. N-I-N-T-E-N-D-O, and a few DJ's sitting atop the mass spinning music. There was a large group of people collected at the bottom of the Ninendo tower, so I ambled over to see what the fuss was about. It was a display of the actual GC console (which was hidden in the playable game demos), and that thing is tiny! The front of it is about as wide as a CD case, and the sides are the same size as the front. It's not exactly a cube, though, since it's not as tall as it is long and wide. Neat looking little thing. Oh, another thing: the controller is really cool. Nintendo apparently fired the jackasses that were responsible for that hellish 64 controller and got some new guys. It's very comfortable, very solid-feeling. The joysticks are more like the one on the Dreamcast controller now, so hopefully they won't cease to function after a few months like the joystick on the 64 controller did. Huzzah!

After a short reprise on one of the couches in the lounge, I went to the PS2 section. Ho-hum. The only things that caught my eye were Final Fantasy X and Gran Turismo 3. I didn't play either. The rest of the shit was pretty recycled-looking. Yawn.

Sega's display was extremely dissapointing. It was very small in comparison to the Sony and Nintendo displays, but the really dissapointing part was that it was invite-only. Average Joes like me werent't aloud to go in. Fuck Sega. Sega is dead.

Okay, now here's the cool part: the Microsoft display. HOLY CRAP. X-Box makes PS2 look like Etch-a-Sketch. Oddworld is absolutely breathtaking. The Nascar game blows the PS2 Nascar out of the water, and it's only 50% complete. I played some game where there was a boat going through this waterway, and all these little guys on the back of my boat were shooting at other boats, and that game probably had the best graphics at the entire show. The water looked like actual water, not blue Seran Wrap. Christ. Now that's a next-gen system. Damn, nigga. The controller is very nice, too. It feels a lot like the DC controller, but thicker and more solid.

I really think that the big console-war is going to be between the X-Box and the Gamecube. They're both better than PS2, whose technology is already getting old. PS2 may have a chance, though, with such aces up their sleeve as Metal Gear Solid: SOL and Final Fantasy X. It's just that GC and XB look so much freaking better than anything I've ever seen. It's hard to say.

Anyway, I know that this review isn't as good as the one I did last year, so sorry. You have to understand, though, that I was not in the best condition to be at E3. I should have been at home asleep.